Male Misogyny

Each of us has enabled the men who raped Asifa. I am tired of the posts on social media about being “heart-broken.” I no longer even feel the space in my chest where my heart should be. I am angry, and my anger is at aimed at you.

I will be 50 years old on Sunday. I lived 29 of those years in India. I was 8 years old when I was first sexually assaulted. Unlike Asifa, I wasn’t kidnapped and murdered. I lived to be sexually abused and assaulted multiple times, by men I knew, by strangers, by doctors, by faith healers, by the editor-in-chief of a major newspaper. I was 45 when I was last physically (not sexually) assaulted, by my brother, at his wedding, in full view of the wedding guests.

Nobody took a stand. None of these men was jailed. None was fired. None was shamed. None was named. Nobody walked out of the wedding in protest.

But there were consequences. India chose to turn its consequences on me. I was shamed, with love, for being an 8-year-old girl who was asking for it. I quickly internalized it. I believe even today that I should have been a different kind of child, hidden my legs as I played, been a little less proud of my pretty face, been a little more aware of my surroundings, a little less disabled so I could run. As an adult, in a high-ranking position in my journalism career, I was asked if the thing with the newspaper editor actually happened or if I’d imagined it (no matter that other women had charged him with similar abuse). I was locked up in a room at my brother’s wedding, “for my own safety”.

I was asked to apologize, to forgive, to forget, to draw upon my resources of compassion. I was asked, by all the family and friends I loved and still long for, to be a better Indian woman.

But let’s not make this about me. Let’s make this about you. Do you call out the violent tempers of the men around you or do you just get out of their way until they “calm down”? Do you step up and stick your neck out when a man or woman is deriding another woman/girl for being too sexy, too fat, too old, too progressive, too wanton, too transsexual, out too late, or in too long? Do you write that comment to shut down a good but sexist joke your popular and powerful male friend just posted on social media? Do you tell your son there will be consequences if he raises his voice, leave alone his hand, on his sister? Or do you ask him to “protect” her, as if she were a victim and he, her savior? Do you order him to get out of her way so she may grow so formidable that she will need no protecting? Do you pay your policemen and your lawmen to look the other way at your misdemeanors but punish the man who has no money for a bribe? Do you revere the “bad boy” movie star who was accused by multiple women of physical assault? Do you elect a prime minister who is charged with inciting a genocide against Muslims and then wonder why a little Muslim child was raped for days in a Hindu temple?

I am haunted by the cries I didn’t hear, of Asifa locked up in that Hindu temple. Our girls have been crying out for years, knocking to be let out from behind locked doors. The parents of Jyoti Singh, the medical student who was brutally gang-raped by five men on a Delhi bus in 2012 and thrown from the bus to later die, say that five years later, things have become worse for girls and women in India. The Dalit women among us have been warning us for decades that the rape of one of them will soon be the rape of one of us. But perhaps their faces are not light-skinned enough, their caste not high enough, their innocence not innocent enough to find their way in our news and social media feeds.

Yes, I am shaming you, on behalf of all the girls and all the old women in and from and with ties to India. Yes, I am blaming you for the childhood I had and the childhood Asifa lost. Yes, I know all the things even the most progressive among you whisper about the secrets some of us don’t keep. Quiet your whispers. Quiet your slogans. Go home and look your boys and men in the eye. Shut up and do the real work, India.

I agree with 95%, disagree with about 5%. Let me focus on the 95% I agree with in this article.

Male misogyny is mostly a crime of omission versus crime of commission. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Often, even usually, the ones who harm us most do so with good intentions. Often those who try to harm us in practice help us. Why is this so? Humans lack wisdom (or if you prefer: intelligence, intuition, Buddhi). Because of this humans lack the ability to see things as they are (Pratyaksha in Sanskrit). Humans often can’t understand what others are feeling, intuiting, thinking. Humans lack empathy.

This is the primary cause of male misogyny; which in many cases is a very subtle thing. Most females–based on my observation–also subconsciously practice male misogyny; but less than men. Girls are on average slightly smarter and slightly superior to boys, after all. Males who practice male misogyny are far more clueless.

My hope is that this article reaches many that other articles on this subject don’t. I am writing this as someone with a great deal of empathy, respect and admiration for very orthodox conservative people from every faith. As a skeptic of current manifestations under the rubric of post modernism, intersectionality, political correctness, virtue signaling, third wave feminism and all the excesses deriving from them. As someone who believes that many males are also being disrespected and hurt in the modern world, and regards this as wrong.

There is no point explaining male misogyny to those who understand male misogyny. But how to explain to those without a subtle understanding intuition? I don’t know.

My plea to all of us would be . . . consider expanding our hearts and increasing our intelligence. Then we will realize that there is infinity in nothing . . . in the noise we ignore. The universe will become manifest before us. Gently drop our minds and see what happens. Let the problems between humans fade away.

Every female human in the world is a part of us. All of us can understand through the lenses of females and through the lenses of males. All of us are part female and part male; both at once . . . from birth to now. Let male misogyny drop away.

37 Replies to “Male Misogyny”

amartya sen wrote on this, the numbers on rapes in India is significantly small than made out to be by the press. even if one were to account for not registering it out of fear etc. Misogyny is true and one needs to work on that, rape is often opportunistic crime, and in traditional societies, there simply are not many opportunities for opposite genders to come into contact with each other as much.

so I do detect bias in reporting especially the focus on rape in India by foreign press. Never mention the numbers do they?. steven pinker too makes the argument on dress women wear, one has to be careful of blaming victims and accounting for natural selection. like the idea that rape is about power, not sex.

On this specific crime, this is very unfortunate and the fact this has found space in media is ok too but it fits the narrative of the left. It would be simply good if one were to put out raw data as a whole . That would have little bias and people can see things for what it is. Problem with narrative bias is that, people will always ask, ” why was this case shown, not others?”. And one can only justifiably answer those questions by directly giving out the numbers as a whole.

bharata bharatavanshi I hope you would concede that I am not a crazy leftist. I think there is a lot of wisdom we can learn from this article.

Male misogyny is a real thing, but badly misunderstood.

I agree that rape is not as bad as the press makes out. Most male misogyny isn’t forcible rape.

“rape is often opportunistic crime, and in traditional societies, there simply are not many opportunities for opposite genders to come into contact with each other as much” 200% disagree with this. Human beings are potentially extremely intelligent and powerful and can transcend base human instincts. Plus in traditional cultures males have a lot of exposure to females inside their family.

“the idea that rape is about power, not sex.” Partly true. There is more to it than that.

I have seen many male jerks in my time from early childhood to now. And in the majority but not all cases; their woman are partly responsible for their misbehavior. Their woman can try to stop them but choose not to. This is immoral, amoral and wrong. Most boys and men have powerful females in their lives. Grandmothers, aunts, moms, sisters, cousins, nieces, daughters, granddaughters, wives, girlfriends. Only woman can protect woman. Only woman and girls can end male misogyny. Females are more important and powerful than males. Values, civilization, culture, character, spirituality are maintained and transmitted by woman. My anecdotal observation is that most but not all males are fools.

Only girls and woman can solve many other challenges the human race confronts too.

I have faith in females. This is why I am not afraid of the Me Too movement, which I support. Woman will keep this movement from going off the rails. [Yes I acknowledge there have been a few excesses.]

women cant achieve anything by themselves. If the other half of humanity are not informed and educated about these issues. ultimately, one must want a measured science of all sociological phenomena. pew polls. To quantify what is not quantifiable is necessary. once that is done, we should look at intervention and see which intervention works.

Bharata, you are referring to the colonization of the mind with inferiority complex; and a lack of self confidence, self assuredness, self actualization. The definition of female is power. In Sanskrit “Shakti”means both female and power.

No one can “give” us power. We are power. When we let power manifest through us then to others it appears as if we have power.

You are right that men have power too. Men and woman are very similar.

This particular rape of this little child was an attempt at ethnic cleansing–to drive the Muslim Gujjar-Bakerwal community out of the Hindu-dominated Kathua District. The Jammu Bar Association took out rallies in support of the rapist. Who takes out rallies in support of a rapist? Two BJP ministers in the State of J&K attended these rallies and have been forced to resign. The entire Kashmir Valley is an uproar over what has happened to the little girl, while the people of Jammu are supporting a rapist, just because he happens to share their religion. This is just an extremely sick situation.

This said a lot of 8 year old or younger boys and girls are being molested, raped or beaten across the world. This is a very serious problem.

One of my friends who is connected with this issue believes that one in four young males in India are molested and a large number of young females too. I am skeptical the percentage is that high, but it is very high. This is an epidemic across the Arab world, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan too.

We need to acknowledge that we as a species have a major problem and address it.

Kabir, there is no Muslim or Hindu about it. They are nomads, all settled communities hate them. People in general just hate “others”.
You say: “The entire Kashmir Valley is an uproar over what has happened to the little girl”.
I do not agree with it. These nomadic tribes are not welcome in the Kashmir valley. You can go through some interviews in the papers. These nomads are pro-India and are not favoured by the Sunni Muslims of the valley.

“Almost everyone is blaming media (which needs no introduction) and the politicians (Ahmm) for exploiting the Asifa’s rape and murder incident as an opportunity to earn brownie points, and rightly so. But the people blaming them must first introspect and must answer to themselves: “where was your outrage all these months?” I goggled the facebook walls of as many people i could but i failed to find a single post, from February till yesterday, denouncing the incident. The oppressor has turned us into a programmed robot. Till now all of us have failed Asifa, including me. Let us at least be fair and honest with ourselves.”

It is sick situation because jammu which now has many hindus worried about their over all demographic being changed and becoming a minority. There is much to the story, many people are being picked up and arrested and people want cbi because the trust in govt is gone inspite of it being bjp-pdp led govt. BJP for power has sacrificed interests of jammu where rohingyas are being settled, when in fact by law no one can be settled from outside of the state. people in jammu feel they have been sold out.

misogyny exists, many issues can be settled through education, cultural awareness programs etc. If the govt is interested. it is not. then everyone will look to law and police to settle things. It’s not the same.

In 1947, Jammu Province was also Muslim-majority. There was a state sponsored genocide of Jammu Muslims which led to many of them fleeing to what is today “Azad Kashmir” or Pakistan. The pattern of ethnic cleansing continues.

I am not interested in whataboutry here by presenting that argument. If that is the impression, then I am mistaken. I am talking with regard to the issues at hand with fears of demography changes. And once again, one cannot compare the period of partition and violence that happened there and this. Also, the report suggests they arent sure as to whether it was genocide or people leaving to pakistan.

It has everything to do with rights people can expect considering an ethnic cleansing already happened in 1990’s in kashmir. And it has the same dynamic of Islam with other religions. Perhaps in your field, you do not take all the data into account to see patterns. you wish to cut up a slice of earth just beneath a ball to account for ball falling down, but in science we have to account for the entire mass of earth to account for the ball falling down to earth. More data the better is the pattern recognition.maybe it is the pattern recognition that bothers you.

any critical view of Islam is islamophobia for you. There is not one single author or work that you have quoted in all your time here that would constitute as legitimate criticism of Islam thus far, the reason is because you dont have one in your mind, you never did. And yes, please do go back to safe space.

@kabir, thank you. You have proved my point. attacking me as opposed to my arguments shows everything there is to know. I wish I could take you everywhere, your evasive measures are all one needs to show why even moderate muslims are a problem.

You have spectacularly failed to quote even a single author or a Single book. This is a moral failure on your part for you do not recognize the suffering of victims of Islam. And as consequence you do not recognize the body of ideas that inspire those vile acts either.

I would thank anan for allowing these arguments here. You have been drawn out and found wanting.

There are no victims of “Islam”. There can be victims of Muslims. Perhaps the distinction between “Islam” and its followers (self-proclaimed) escapes you, but it is a fairly basic distinction. Where I have ever defended “ISIL” or Al Qaida?

There are passages in the Holy Quran that can be interpreted in various nasty ways, but there are passages in the Bible, the Torah and The “Laws of Manu” that can also be interpreted in such ways. It’s all about who is doing the interpreting and for what purpose. Perhaps Literary Interpretation did not form part of your education. I cannot address those gaps.

“Liberal” Muslims (for lack of a better word) are not supporting terrorist acts. Normal Hindus are not going around and lynching Muslims for eating beef. Extremists exist in all religions. Even atheists can be extremists. Josef Stalin was not a believer.

About 20 minutes in the protector of the Aryans (Armin) and the hero of Pakistan (Ali Rivzi)–two atheist muslims I greatly respect–say that atheists should welcome and celebrate muslims mocking and making fun of atheists. That this is a pathway to dialogue. Mocking also helps Atheists not take themselves too seriously, introspect and improve themselves.

I agree completely with them. Mocking the East philosophy also helps the East.

Most of the people attacked as Islamaphobes are muslims. Unless nonmuslims are free to openly and honestly discuss Islam, muslims can’t be free to discuss their own religion.

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Bharata, you should feel free to ask any questions about Islam and muslims you have. Then muslims and the friends of muslims can respond to you. This is a pathway to mutual understanding and mutual respect.

I read large parts of the laws of Manu long ago. Almost no Hindus do. I would be curious about the passages that some regard as extremist. Maybe the parts about property rights, inheritance rights, divorce rights? They don’t have eminent domain and are more free market than modern societies.

I am not aware of any state punishments for LBGTQ or nonmuslims per say. The idea of “nonmuslim” doesn’t exist in the document. Plus Manu Smriti is very clear that it only applies for a short period of time and needs to be updated and modified for each time period. By the Mahabharata (life of Krishna), Manu Smriti had already evolved significantly.

My understanding is that Manu Smriti and the Dharma Shastras have Jati and Varna. There is no mention of caste. There are also ways for someone to change their Varna, albeit they are not easy and most of the time not worth it. The Manu Smriti gives individuals considerable rights and freedoms. As a child I also read ancient Roman and Greek translations relating to their legal systems and found them similar in many ways. The close ties between the Manu Smriti, Bhishma’s speech on the bed of hours, Chanakya arthashastra; and ancient Greek/Roman laws was fascinating to me.

The caste system as people today understand it came a long time after the Manu Smriti stopped being used.

When reading the Dharma Shastras and Manu Smriti I got the feeling that perhaps some people had modified it with political views in mind in some sections.

Maybe at some point articles might be written about it.

Everyone is welcome to consider the Varna system disgusting. But perhaps such a person should consider reflecting on the qualities of Satwa Guna, Rajas Guna, Thamo Guna; and on the several paths to realize the truth (some of which are more suited to people with different combinations of Gunas). Meritocratic hierarchies of competence, capacity, and the nature of different people might be worth analyzing. America, Singapore, and many OECD countries have similar Varna type systems today and it works okay.

The caste system is not meritocratic. A Dalit Engineer is still a Dalit. Sujatha Gidla’s book goes into great detail on this.

Dr. Ambedkar had a Ph.D. He was still an “untouchable”. Any system in which someone is “touchable” and someone else is “untouchable” just as an accident of birth cannot be defended in the 21st century. That is just sick.

There is no such thing as an “Atheist Muslim”. Atheist means lack of belief in any sort of god. “Muslim” means “I believe there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad (peace be upon him) is his prophet”. You can’t square that circle. Someone who cannot sincerely recite the Kalima is not a Muslim, no matter what their family background. Words have meanings. “Atheist Muslim” is a logical contradiction. I believe this not the first time I have explained this.

One really cant understand the holier than thou attitude of muslims and liberals who spout pities about rape and attempt to smear and guilt trip Hindus with fantastic allegations. Everyone knows that it is muslims who are the most violent and bloodthristy and have a fetish for raping pagan women as evidenced in the case of the yazidis. Even in India most of the 3rd degree crimes like rape and murder are committed by muslims who are similar genetically to the locals which suggests that islam is a religion that promotes crime against non believers. Somehow liberals, christians and muslims have ignored the genocide of yazidis, which is how every muslim would behave if given a chance, and are trying to equate hindus with such criminals on the basis of propaganda and fake news. This victimology of the abrahamists, blaming pagans and crying foul even as they kill them has many precedents in history, and one of the reasons for their successful expansion.
And this article is only one in a long history of demonization of non abrahamists written with a devious intent to equate them to history’s criminals. One has to admire the psychosis and the fanaticism of allahs followers when every muslim by definition is innocent, and pagans can be killed(the only option according to all madhabs but hanafi) and their women converted to sex slaves, and then blame non muslims for defending themselves! There can be no doubt that the evil treatment of women by muslims is what brought this terrible rape culture to india; due to muslim predation alone girl children became undesirable; the only areas where these rapes occur are those with islamic influence; and in almost all of the cases the perpetrators are muslims. Equating hindus to muslims is a cunning ploy of the christian-muslim controlled media and has no basis in reality and can be nothing but a prelude to the humiliation and genocide of hindus that is no doubt being planned by muslim and christian clerics.
One wonders if islam removes all the humanity in men and women and makes them zombies for the furtherance of this religion, akin to cordyceps. That muslims by default,unless proved otherwise are bloodthirsty criminals is the opinion not only of hindus but the qing officials of china,japanese and perhaps even some christians who might be regretting their support of islam. In that case the non muslims might be forced to do whatever is necessary to keep themselves alive.

rahul, I have been honored to meet and know many great muslims. I am sure you would fall in love with them (in a platonic way)if you met them. 🙂

I would rather you used the words “Islamist” rather than muslim. The Jihadi Islamists have killed over 100 million liberal and minority muslims since 632 AD. The suffering of liberal and minority muslims should trouble and sadden our hearts as much as the suffering of nonmuslims.

In 2018 I wouldn’t blame Christians as much as post modernists . . . although Christians have made many mistakes too. Post modernists (including their marxists branch) have long been in conflict with liberal and minority muslims and used Islamists to attack muslims they don’t like. Post modernists also use Islamists to attack nonmuslims they don’t like.

Hundreds of millions of muslims around the world are good people and we should ally with them.

Sarah Palin once said to let Allah sort it out. I don’t know what she meant by that. But maybe she meant let Daesh kill the muslims off.

This sentiment is widespread among nonmuslims. Not just in America but all over the world. Muslims are upset that nonmuslims keep backing Islamist Jihadis against them.

During the slaughter in Iraq by Al Qaeda in the mid 2000s, many nonmuslims wanted to let Al Qaeda kill hundreds of thousands or millions of Iraqis. Many nonmuslims even praised Al Qaeda. When Iraqis would see this reported in the Iraqi press; they would get very saddened and upset.

Recently in Libya, many nonmuslims wanted to allow Daesh and Al Qaeda organize a genocide against muslims and said that no nonmuslim should help Libyans. Many nonmuslims wanted to allow Daesh and Al Qaeda organize a genocide against Syrians.